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Please keep the humour in good taste (hopefully you can find some good taste humour these days). In January 2013 threads were split up into sub-topics, which explains the unusually high views that some (original) threads have. This forum is "read only" for members until they're well established.

I didn't know where was the best place to put this, but I've put it in Comedy because when I read this story I just burst out laughing at how ridiculous it is! I blame the system which seems to have no controls and which has let this happen more so than the man himself; I actually find myself in awe of how he dared even think he could get away with this.

I do know quite a few young Italians who despair with the situation the country is in though and with how so many news stories coming out of Italy seem to reinforce all the negative and embarrassing stereotypes the rest of the world has about the country, so I can understand the public anger this story appears to have caused.

I once spent ten days travelling around Sardinia as well, and remember seeing T-shirts for sale bearing the name of the island with slogans like "Just do it...later" and "No school, no work = no problem", so I think within Italy it has the reputation as being lazy.

It certainly did seem to be extremely slow paced and laid back even by Italian standards - I remember being the only passenger on board a bus once and actually having to walk the last two or three miles to the town I wanted to get to because the driver just stopped in a very odd place and wouldn't go any further. I tried asking him if the bus was really meant to stop in the middle of nowhere outside the town, but he didn't seem in the slightest bit bothered.

Thinking about it more seriously though, when you think of how places like that that are part of the "rich West" are privileged enough to enjoy a standard of living far exceeding that of most people in the rest of the world whether they work or not, it really does bring it home how decadent Europe is living on borrowed time.

Carlo Cani started work as a miner in 1980 but soon found that he suffered from claustrophobia and hated being underground.

...

He started doing everything he could to avoid hacking away at the coal face, inventing an imaginative range of excuses for not venturing down the mine in Sardinia where he was employed.

....

But rather than find a different occupation, he managed to milk the system for 35 years, until retiring on a pension in 2006 at the age of just 52.